Actually, lots of the old deeds registers and indexes at LINZ offices around
NZ have been transferred to or will be transferred to Archives NZ offices.
As far as I know, that's the plan for all of them eventually. I don't know
about progress with the ones for Taranaki.

For example we used to access the old Canterbury land indexes and registers
at the former Lands & Survey office in Worcester Street Christchurch, then
later, after the deeds and mapping sections of L & S were separated (these
days they are LINZ and Terralink), they were housed in a dedicated old
deeds room at the LINZ office on the third floor of Torrens House in Cashel
Street. Westland land records were held in Hokitika, Nelson land records in
Nelson, and Marlborough land records in Blenheim.

Then a few years ago the Westland, Nelson and Marlborough registers were
brought to Christchurch and housed beside the Canterbury registers in the
old deeds room at Torrens House.

Now all those registers have been transferred to Archives NZ in Peterborough
Street, Christchurch.

The good news is that the Canterbury land indexes have been scanned by
Archives NZ and put online at Archway. The bad news is that deeds
themselves haven't been scanned, you have to view those at the Archives NZ
office in Peterborough Street.

It's a clunky process to go through the old deeds indexes online. It is
actually much easier to do it in person with the actual registers. Provided
you can get your head around the old deeds system that is. It will take a
newbie a day just to start getting used to them. And the registers are
usually VERY BIG and VERY HEAVY volumes.

For the uninitiated:

There are various ways of getting at the desired land in the Canterbury
indexes.

1. Land registers - If you have a description of the section (eg from the
NZ Freeholders' Index) then you can look in the several land register
volumes. the "A" register is Christchurch (within the four main avenues),
The "C" registers are for rural sections outside Chch, and other registers
are for other parts of canterbury (eg Timaru, Waimate, etc) which have their
own letters. There are further subdivision registers, eg C/S 1, C/S 2,
C/S 3, and so forth. The relevant page will show all the transactions
concerning that section over the years.

For example if you are looking for section C3578 then you look in the C
registers for number 3578 - funnily enough they are in numerical order :))

2. Nominal registers - several volumes - checking these for a person's name
will give you numbers from the primary index to check. Doesn't necessarily
have both parties to a transaction though, so you might not be able to find
someone or the whole of their properties for that reason. The entries can
refer to more than just land - could be mortgages for example

3. Primary index - several volumes - transactions were recorded in these as
they were brought in for registration, and assigned a unique number - can
check the primary index volumes page by page looking down both of parties
columns looking for your party. A tedious process but a thorough one. Or
if you have found relevant numbers via the nominal indexes than of course
you can go straight to that number in the primary index. Funnily enough
they are in numerical order.

All sorts of transactions were recorded - deeds, leases, mortgages,
conveyances, whatever. Be aware that a deed may be registered well after it
was made, sometime years afterward.

4. Wills index - if land transactions involved a will then these deeds were
indexed in wills registers.

5. BDM index registers - sometimes details of deaths and marriages etc were
part of the deed because they were important evidence for the transaction.
Unlike the official NZ BDMs they don't cost.

What you will end up with is various informations about a transaction, eg a
description of the land involved (which you can use to find the section in
the land registers) and references to further indexes or deeds. eg 22D154
or 22/154 will mean look at folio (page) number 154 in deeds register number
22 for the transaction. An actual deed in a register will probably have an
annotation as to where to find the next deed in the series.

The deeds themselves are what you want to get at mostly, but the land
indexes and primary index provide a bigger picture and lead you to other
deeds concerning the section in question. Each deed has a plan of the
section in it. There are often valuable genealogical hints about parties in
deeds which makes them worth finding for that reason alone.

Those old land records have for many years been at LINZ in Hamilton.I may
stand corrected, I have heard that they are no longer available to the
public. If so, you will need to have staff search for you. No doubt they
will charge. NZSG may be able to help you with t hat aswell.
Happy hunting
Bill